ENGG1110 Problem Solving by Programming

2024-2025 Term 1

Project

Due Date: 2024/12/06 (Fri) 23:59

1. Introduction

Candy Crush is a popular match-three puzzle game in the world, originally released in

2012 for Facebook and later adapted for mobile platforms.

In the basic gameplay, the gameboard consists of a grid filled with various types of candies, each represented by different shapes and colors. The player’s goal is to create matches of three or more identical candies by swapping adjacent one. When a match is made, the matched candies are cleared from the gameboard, and new candies will fall  down to fill the empty spaces. This sometimes leads to “chain reactions”, where new matches are automatically created as the board refills.

In this project, you will develop a Candy Crush game using the C programming language. The project is structured in two phases: Part I focuses on implementing the basic version of the game, while Part II builds upon the first part by adding advanced features and additional gameplay mechanics.

You are required to complete the given source code main.c without modifying any existing code (except otherwise specified) or introducing new libraries. Marks will be deducted from every modification.

2. Program Flow

Part I

Part II

3. Suggested Project Schedule

4. Sample Runs for Part I

The following shows several examples of inputs and the resulting candy clearings. User inputs are indicated by bold, highlighted underlined text. The matches found by the function are in red font.

5. Detailed Program Design Flow – Part I

In this project,you are required to follow exactly the output format specified. Using other output formats will jeopardize your mark.

This program will

1.  Read and initialize the game board from source

2.  Display the game board

3.  Allow the player to select a candy to swap

a.  The player can only swap two candies at a time

b.  The player will choose a candy by entering the coordinates (row, column)

c.  The player will also input a direction (U for Up, D for Down, L for Left, R for

Right) to specify where to swap the selected candy.

4.  Find and remove matches

a.  After each swap, check for matches of three or more identical candies in a row or column.

b.  If a match is found, display a message indicating the match’s location, remove the matched candies, and update the game board.

5.  Check for a game-over condition

a.  Check if no further matches are possible on the gameboard.

b.  If the board has no possible moves left, display the message and end the game.

5.1.       Header files, Functions, and Variable Declarations

At  the  beginning  of  the  main.c file,  we  include  two  headers,  <stdio.h>  and

<stdlib.h>.

No other header files or library are allowed in the project.

We define several  macros  after the  header  line.  Macros  are  identifiers  defined  by #define, which are replaced by their value before compilation. The first two are H and W.

H is the height of the game board, while W is its width. Therefore, our Candy Crush game board is a 6x6 square. In our test cases, we do not have any test cases with varying board size. You may try it if you are interested.

Each cell on the game board stores a candy, with different types of candies represented by numbers. To assist in converting these numbers into their corresponding candy representations, the following global variable is provided.

No other global variables are permitted. All variables you define must be declared within functions and passed as parameters or return values as necessary. Violations of this rule will result in a deduction of marks.

Also, there are a number of helper functions declared in the project. You can add new functions to aid your work, but you CANNOT modify (function signatures – function    names, return type, parameters), or delete the given functions.

5.2.       Main Function

The main function is given to control the game flow.

There are some local variables already declared for you. You can declare your own local variables for your use.

The main function controls the gameplay as follows:

1.  Call initGameBoard() to load the initial game board.

2.  Enter the main game loop. The loop should continue until the game is over. Here are the tasks in the loop.

a.  The loop should start by printing five equal signs (=====) as a separator for each round, as follows:

b.  Then, call printGameBoard()to display the current game board.

c.  Call askForSwap() to execute the swapping logic. If the askForSwap()  returns zero (0), indicating the swapping is unsuccessful. In this case, print the following error message:

d.  Call isGameOver()to check if any moves are possible. If no valid moves   remain, display a game over message and exit the game loop. In this case, print the following error message:

5.3.       Initializing Game Board

The main() function will first call the initGameBoard()function, which initializes the board[] array for the later gameplay. In Part I, the content of the array should be read from another hard-coded arrays – board_samples[].

5.4.       Print Game Board

The given printGameBoard() is useful throughout the program to show the current game board status to the user. You are required to implement this function and print the game board on the screen based on the following format, where ␣ represents a space character that should appear as an actual space in the program output.

First, print a line of five equal signs (=====) as a separator. Then, display the game board with row and column numbers labeled. Each cell should be separated by spaces and vertical bars to clearly distinguish rows and columns.

There are two types of elements displayed on the grid:

•    Candies: Use the candies[] character array to convert the numerical values stored in board[][] into the corresponding candy symbols.

•    Empty Space: Display the space character (' '), which is stored in board[][] as ASCII 32 (space).

It is crucial that your output format follows the example exactly, including the number of spaces and any other formatting details, as the program will be graded using an autograder. Any deviation in the format could result in a loss of marks.